when i referred to short cuts I was referring to developing some drills , other folks already have such drills and it`s easier to copy than start from scratch

One thing i noticed about Martins Drills was the familiarity with what Ive come up with for myself , now from watching his again i can see where I can refine and tweak and explore more .

I see these things as drilling the elemnets that eventually I worked out slightly for myself doing jka style shotokan .... , it`s more a case of feel and recognising your options , If your not doing this work however I fail to see how youll develop the awareness without a lot of hit and miss .

I never managed to pull of traps and jams before doing such work , now there a common feature of my training .

I think it`s easy to overlook that many of skills have simply vanished from Okinawan karate , people with a background in chinese MA can tend to see them as simple , but when basics are missing it can lead to a huge lack of understandng .

Quote:

But where Marcus might say 'short cut' I would say that these drills, depending on what and how, can make possible what might otherwise be impossible or would take forever to materialize in application.

Pretty much how I see it Jim .

And thanks for Joining in Martin , Ive raided your sites so many times , always incredible information , look forward to learning more .

Agree with both of you of course ( because we only have 2 arms and 2 legs ). Should not forget Pat is kung fu in origin.

Jim, I am interested to know what you do for footwork drills. The only thing we do is kick each others legs a fair bit. This is not so strange as it seems. Firstly it is good stance checking and secondly it actually teaches you how to kick quite well. I have worked often with people from more kicky styles, and when you get them to kick your legs with a front kick they either can't land it, or it throws them off balance.

We are very much Southern hands / solid feet. Do you do any repetitive drill work with your feet attacking or defending? Do you use your shins for blocking? If so do you train them up?

Our group here would not have time to train this up, but if you have any clips I would be interested in seeing what you think is worthwhile exercises in this area. Or do you do what we do which is pretty much say 'feet are for standing / sweeping, hooking or very close kick work' - this is of course my interpretation only from what I know of our style.

For me the 'feeling leading foot' that some Wing Chun schools use is very weak, and theory aside , it seems to me only half of a full picture if that. But this is an area I have not at all explored.

Also I think there are many styles of WC. Which lineage do you do and how would you characterise it? Please refer me to another thread if you have been through this before.

Martin

PS. I have now asked Dana and Jim for a clip, so Stryke....go on....you know you want to!![/quote]

this ones me playing form the outside , first time Patrick did this so it`s very basic .

I`ll tape some others for the thread , nothing advanced , i`m going to be stealing yours Martin , I do the cross body in a similar fashion , and as well as the wauke or circle of type move I also do a sweep down type move inspired by the sword and sheild posture (one arm up one down ) covering the centreline very much into a sweep jerk down app , this was stolen/inspired by some southern mantis and Five ancestor fist clips Ive been watching .

I`m a real novice with this kind of trainig but am getting good results from it IMHO

Most of the basic foot work in picked up in chi sao. Starting off in the yee jee kim young ma stance which you do very well by the way Martin, folks work the bik ma stepping from the second form, aligning the body, turning etc, in an effort to make the partner loose position, and often facing while trying not to loose their own. On the inside during chi sao at an advanced level folks will work leg traps, jams, sweeping, hooking, etc often working to collapse the opponent's stance, etc.

martin watts wrote:

We are very much Southern hands / solid feet.

Yes this is something that many other styles don't get. Kicking on the outside is not preferred. The exception is when the opponent kicks, then the idea is to clash and/or attack with a centerline kick. On a clash we maintain contact and displace his base. This differs from what most folks do in terms of retracting the kick which would prevent the leg from issuing energy and taking space.

WCK kicks are sometimes called invisible. This means that the preferred distance for kicking is when you are inside, where the opponent cannot see them coming. The other saying is WCK likes to kick with three feet on the ground for support..

martin watts wrote:

Do you do any repetitive drill work with your feet attacking or defending?

Advanced students generally work intercepting kicks with the legs, either kicking or using any of the dozen or so leg techniques. There is actually a ton of leg stuff in the system but it is taught so late that many, including myself don't get to do most of it. I would like to learn more but am having trouble working that out right now plus I still have a ways to go in mastering regular old chi sao...

martin watts wrote:

Do you use your shins for blocking? If so do you train them up?

Yes the kicking drills address this but the idea is not to take full force using the leg stuff. I have been using the shins for "blocking" since karate and I have always had tough shins.. Still the idea is to redirect or cut off the attack with the legs.

martin watts wrote:

For me the 'feeling leading foot' that some Wing Chun schools use is very weak, and theory aside , it seems to me only half of a full picture if that. But this is an area I have not at all explored.

The sticking leg drills are way cool in my book but I am not sure if you are talking about chi gerk or sticking legs as I know it. The base lifting actions, in addition to training sensitivity, gives the legs a great work out for kicking, if you can imagine working that for 20 minutes with a partner. Later you work to steal balance, gain access to the center, eg. the rear leg for kicking, trapping or general stance destruction. The idea is to work to control and steal balance with the legs on contact while maintaining one's own balance and ability to attack. Later both sticking legs and sticking hands is combined. Preliminary training for this is the single leg play of the first form.

martin watts wrote:

Also I think there are many styles of WC. Which lineage do you do and how would you characterize it?

I was a student of the late Moy~Yat. Hmm characterize it? Sifu perhaps above all tried to teach the system and run the school as Ip Man his Sifu did, allowing students to explore and move at their own pace while maintaining technical accuracy and a keen understanding of the whats and whys.

_________________ShaolinM Y V T K F"Receive what comes, stay with what goes, upon loss of contact attack the line" – The Kuen Kuit

Please go ahead and play with any of our stuff. The -best- bit is the last one on that clip I think which should work well from Uechi stance. This is pure Yong Chun Crane. The other stuff you have to see if it works for you. Are you using the same base drill? I think this is only of of many bases so the exploration is endless. The off side ( i.e. pushing straight to the opponents shoulder ) looks contrived but actually happens a lot if you are having a tussle. The roundhouse I am not sure about. At the right range with a setup a good roundhouse is very difficult to block and I sometimes think a jkd style guard is one of the only realistic options. We also have those positions in our forms but I do not teach them.

There is so much stuff I would like to be doing on this area. I have thrown together here 20 bits for beginniners. In effect what I think complements our San Zhan form. I have suddenly got 11 students since I came back to Mallorca 3 months ago. So at the moment we are flailing around a bit and may be I will have to systemise what we practice a little which is not so good for me, but people are drifting otherwise. I am used in the past to working with only 2 or 3 people at one time max.

Jim, second link does not work. First one, I think that exercise is not only in WC. Have done similar in Mantis.

Quote:

There is actually a ton of leg stuff in the system but it is taught so late that many, including myself don't get to do most of it

I have never seen anyone do leg drill work which they have not worked out for themselves. I sort of went down this route at one time, was not convinced that it worked so well ( or at least I never could get it to ) so never continued.

The hand drill work is very clear. Whatever the many reasons for practicing it, in the end when you cross hands with someone else then you know it pays off.

We also have a 70 30 weight split, but the tension between the legs ramp this balance to more 45 55 in terms of vectors of force. When I say the feeling leading foot, I am referring to some WC I have seen where the 70 30 has little tension between them so I percieve the front leg to be weak and a soft target for a happy go luck Muy Tai type man.

Quote:

The exception is when the opponent kicks, then the idea is to clash and/or attack with a centerline kick

Do you mean taking the back leg? Video clip explanation required. If you havn't already got one, think of me as a good reason to start doing these things!

Invisible I think is Mu Yin ( shadowless and all that romantic stuff ) for us. But it is one of those areas which we do not analyse and then people say 'ahh that is a shadowless kick' but for us it is just a kick / leg technique.

We have another thing which is a soft knee trap from the inside and outside. But this is from a body of work I have not studied or practiced.

It is a shame to leave the footwork late. If my people can get a good front kick landed on a specific target and differentiate between the type of kick force then that is I think all I we can do. I think that is the most adaptable tool as it can be used for joint rolling, deep impact, point work, stance correction, conditioning and stomping. So we just stick with the good old 'variations on a theme of a front kick'.

( of course once everyone has gone home I get back to my jumping spinning hurricane MONSTER kicks!! )

Jim, second link does not work. First one, I think that exercise is not only in WC. Have done similar in Mantis.

Wouldn't surprise me if there was something similar in many of our sister styles. The sticking legs gets nearly as involved as the chi sao with the hands.

martin watts wrote:

I have never seen anyone do leg drill work which they have not worked out for themselves. I sort of went down this route at one time, was not convinced that it worked so well ( or at least I never could get it to ) so never continued.

Well I would very much like to get the advanced leg stuff but there are obstacles in my way..

martin watts wrote:

The hand drill work is very clear. Whatever the many reasons for practicing it, in the end when you cross hands with someone else then you know it pays off.

That is the truth and in modern combative terms it provides a platform where one may study how to deal with continued resistance after the clash, beginning a study at the clash rather than ending it there - as in the fallacy of the cooperative 1, 2, 3, etc, technique "kill" that many train.

martin watts wrote:

We also have a 70 30 weight split, but the tension between the legs ramp this balance to more 45 55 in terms of vectors of force. When I say the feeling leading foot, I am referring to some WC I have seen where the 70 30 has little tension between them so I perceive the front leg to be weak and a soft target for a happy go luck Muy Tai type man.

Well this stuff is somewhat academic to me. I appreciate the percentages for training. We can tell students what the percentage is supposed to be but I have rarely seen anyone do it quite like that in sparring or fighting.

The chum kiu stance is the one that has the aligned lead leg. In Moy~Yat WCK the weight is supposed to be ALL on the rear, the only weight on the lead leg is the weight of the leg itself. This is direct from Ip > MY.

However this stance like any other is not frozen, it really represents a mechanism and a mechanic for a certain kind of movement, structure and power. The lead weight distribution will change as does the stance as one needs to reposition, turn, change and adjust.

The basic footwork pattern can be seen by moving from the Siu Lim Tao stance called Yee Jee Kim Young Ma, <this is the stance you did in the clips many times, exactly as we do btw.> As you move from stance 1 to stance 2 and or back again you see a movement similar to the circle stepping in sanchin and sanjan except our lead leg is going to fire into the opponent to break his structure. Again the idea is to move inside the opponent's space and filling it with our body. One of my teachers was so good at this that when he stepped into your space attacking you above <where most of your attention was> it seemed as if the floor had disappeared and there was no place to put your foot down when moving, just before you fell.

Quote:

The exception is when the opponent kicks, then the idea is to clash and/or attack with a centerline kick

martin watts wrote:

Do you mean taking the back leg? Video clip explanation required. If you haven’t already got one, think of me as a good reason to start doing these things!

I'll do what I can in the way of clips. I am not in formal training right now.

The rear leg target is nice but not often seen from outside. The 'target' is the center. So what's seen more often is firing the kick into their kicking leg..if you connect, bang you challenge their balance right off and step into their space... So, if they are on the line and clash you stick and step in. If they are not on the line then the target is whatever you hit, this is often the groin area, if they turn it may be their bum, but again you are really trying to step in and take up space. It's from here <second action> that you may indeed be able to get the rear leg, we say, each step may be a kick.

In other cases simply stepping in and placing the leg down under and inside their stance will make it impossible for them to replant their kicking leg where they need to regain balance, and there goes their whole base. WCK under these conditions does not want to do a take down as many might think, on the contrary as in the wooden dummy you want to get a good hold on them if they loose their base so you can hold them up as they dangle and do a meat grinder on them..and then drop them.

martin watts wrote:

We have another thing which is a soft knee trap from the inside and outside. But this is from a body of work I have not studied or practiced.

Sounds similar to something called kwai sat where you step in slightly behind them and drop the knee into the side of their knee and it just makes them drop down onto their collapsed knee.

martin watts wrote:

It is a shame to leave the footwork late.

Well it's not really footwork that is left late. All kinds of footwork or movement involving the study of facing, following, turning, sticking and entering is trained with and through the moving chi sao. It's more the advanced leg defense, leg sticking stuff that is later. I never minded this too much as I had done karate and was comfortable using the standard shin defense; I was always more concerned with hand work, which is still my focus.

_________________ShaolinM Y V T K F"Receive what comes, stay with what goes, upon loss of contact attack the line" – The Kuen Kuit

Which drills are actually from Crane? One thing I don’t understand about some of the drills you do is letting that elbow and the tan sao to retract. That’s is not in the forms right? You had mentioned that Crane does not like to let the elbow come up, as in bong sao, but wouldn’t this also be true for letting/bringing the tan back and sort of letting it collapse like that? In chi sao if you bring your tan back like that you are asking for trouble..

_________________ShaolinM Y V T K F"Receive what comes, stay with what goes, upon loss of contact attack the line" – The Kuen Kuit

The buckled.This is wrong. We try to keep it open. Difficult to do when in flow. If we concentrate on this ( keeping it open ) then the drill is much harder as the sideways forces come into play. the moves are also a lot shorter.

The base push cycle is practiced in our lineage Yong Chun. All the other moves I have added to the base cycle. Last Feb I was in Yong Chun looking for 2 man drill work. I showed them the direction we were going. They said no problem, but are more interested in position - stance - tension side than what is happening with the arms.

The moves I am adding / using are either:
1. based on seperate single move drills like the single changes - i.e. they practice this as a drill work
2. based on form attack positions that I have been shown ( e.g. most of the grab work ) - i.e. we practice the attack but not as part of a drill
3. Based on my own interpretation of a form move which may not be the one they are using - this is the case with the reverse shoulder lock. - i.e. I could be completely wrong in the specific application with regards to the form, but the application works
4. A move that I have not got in any forms so far that I do but want to practice. This only applies to the high roundhouse.

The way our forms work is the more ´basic´the form, the more you are dealing with generic positions with have many applications. The more ádvanced´the form, the more you have specific attack responses. So in fact, the basic forms are more advanced. This is why when you talk of applications with a White Crane teacher in Yong Chun it becomes complex.

So in effect when we are doing San Zhan based exercises, we are saying, whatever comes in, find the POSITION response as oppose to the BLOCK and ATTACK response. Of course, if the position response happends to be the other side of your body you have an attack or entry.

But at this level I cease to be a good reference / representative for our system, because with the best intentions in the world conversations in Chinsese at this level begin to evade me. So all is an effort on my part to represent our lineage. Where my confirmation of what is technically correct and what is not evades me, I have to fall back on basics and go with what is effective from that position.

On the last trip, I show some exercises and they say´that is good Crane `or `that is karate`. This is unfortunately the way I have to train as I am only in China 2 weeks per year, but in between I am training most days, and also I am a 'grasshopper' who gets bored with San Zhan and wants to play with as much stuff as possible.

Mark has written me and given me permission to post clips from his program. So if someone already has a copy and can post a few clips - that'd be great. Otherwise they'll be a delay as my office moved over the weekend and I'm just totally swamped at work.

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